Fiddler on the Roof

I am having a feast of theatre visits at the moment.  This week saw me going to see Fiddler on the Roof at our local theatre. I saw the film many moons ago but hadn't seen the stage production, when it was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s. The production was excellent - it had originally been on last year at Regents Park and then the Barbican in central London but was now touring the country. There was comedy, energetic dancing and of course quite a lot of well-known songs, the words of which I weirdly remembered from the 1960s.

The story is of course quite harrowing about the Russian pogroms, forcing the Jews out of their villages. Quite ironic really with what is happening now in Gaza. The violinist (Raphael Papo) who played the Fiddler was exceptionally talented and made his violin almost talk. Here is a youtube video of him, playing on the roof of the Barbican in London.

The main character, Tevye, is on stage about 95% of the time for the two and a half hours, either singing or talking. From my pathetic efforts to learn a 15-minute piece off by heart for our choir concerts, I can imagine what a lot of lines and lyrics he has to keep in his head. Here is also a favourite bit of mine - The Bottle Dance at the wedding scene - which was very cleverly done. It starts about a minute into the video.

Chartwell

In my life I have been three times to Chartwell, the Kent home of Winston Churchill. It is about a 30-minute drive from my house. Churchill had bought the house in 1922 for £5,000, much to the disapproval of his wife Clementine who thought it needed a lot of money throwing at it to do it up.  It had eventually been taken on by the National Trust in 1946 and opened to the public. My first visit  was about 40 years ago, when I went with Greg and my parents.  The second time was a few years ago when I went with some friends. The third time was a couple of weeks ago on Kay's birthday. She and her husband Darcy had been having visits to a few places linked with Churchill. They had visited the Cabinet War Rooms in London, then Bletchley Park and now wanted to round it off with visiting Chartwell.

It was a hot sweltering Sunday when we went and the Kent countryside was scorched. The gardens at Chartwell are beautiful with walled gardens and sweeping lawns which were also suffering from the heat. We arrived at midday and went straight into the house. It was an original Tudor house with extensions added on by Clementine. 

The rooms were huge and tastefully decorated, although the kitchen still retained the style of the 1930s and 1940s.  

There is a separate building called The Studio where Churchill painted his masterpieces, no doubt to help him relax from the stress of running a country at war.

The grounds are amazing - sweeping lawns, a small lake, walled gardens full of native cottage garden flowers and roses of every description. Near the studio is a tall pendant lime tree which gave off a very strong perfume from several metres away. 

Suffice to say there were butterflies and bees in their hundreds. 

The views across the wider Kent countryside could be seen inside and outside the house and were very calming.

All in all a good day was had by all, polished off by a celebratory meal in our local posh Italian restaurant. 

ABBA

I am not normally a visitor of theatres or cinemas, because my hearing fails me and I spend two or three hours twiddling my thumbs trying to work out what the actors on stage are saying. However, I do like a musical or concert, because I can hear and appreciate the music. Eighteen months ago for my birthday, Kay promised me tickets to the ABBA Voyage  experience in London. We had only got around to booking tickets recently and this week saw us heading up to East London to see it.

We stopped en route to Canary Wharf  to wander round there

Centre of Canary Wharf area

and ended up eating at a pizzeria before getting the Docklands Light Railway to the delightfully-named Pudding Mill Lane. 

The ABBA venue is adjacent to Pudding Mill Lane station and, once inside, is a complex full of bars selling all manner of drinks and food (which you can take to your seats) as well as shops selling merchandise. The auditorium is huge - this photo does not do it justice -  but was taken high up where we sat with an excellent view of the stage. I have no idea how many thousands were there, but, apart from the seated areas, there was a dance pit near the stage where people were crammed in to dance. It did not however stop us dancing by our seats as many did for the popular songs like Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia. in fact there was not a single person sitting for those.

I expected the show to be good, as ABBA tunes are always catchy, but I had not expected it to be mind-blowing. The use of avatars to make it look like the real ABBA are on stage was very convincing and side panels showed them up close too. There was a live band to one side actually playing the music with a backing singing group of three girls. By far the most mind-blowing was the lighting effects which changed with every song.  It was like nothing else I had been to. 

The photos above were taken as the auditorium was filling up.  Sadly, as the show was about to start,  we were told not to be tempted to use our phones to photograph or video anything, as we would be escorted out of the complex. I would have loved to record a snippet just to show here, but you'll have to go yourselves to see what it is like. The following is the official youtube advert.

Hot and bothered

The weather has been scorching-hot here in London for the last few weeks. Temperatures of over 30C in London are not pleasant. The house bricks seem to retain the heat overnight and I feel like an oven-cooked chicken. The lawns are brown, the plants and trees struggling to cope. Some of the trees look like they are already shedding their autumn leaves and it is only July. It is stifling at night. Even with open windows, the bedroom is airless and sleeping has failed me so many times, I feel like an automaton.

Into this hot-house, I managed to develop a ripe sebaceous cyst on my back. I have had it for 25 years or more and it mainly lies dormant but this is the third time it has erupted. A recent visit to A&E had a surgeon examining me and he decided to drain it under a general anaesthetic, He did not close the would, but left it open to heal from the inside out. This meant I have been having to visit my General Practitioner's nurse to have it cleaned and dressed every two days for the last 3 weeks. I finally got the all-clear a few days ago. The wound has closed and I can keep the plaster off to let the air get at the scar. Apparently they were unable to remove the sac surrounding the cyst, so I face another operation under general anaesthetic in September, once it has calmed down, to remove it completely in the hopes it will never bother me again. This is what the little blighter looked like just before the operation.

Summer concert

I took a break from my weekly Sunday posts last week to see if I got any more comments to my post about Blogland, but suffice to say, nine comments was the sum total (a big thank you to those who did), so back to my weekly post again.

Our recent summer choir concert was a huge success. We'd been building up to it since New Year.  The overall theme of the concert was Earth, Water, Air and Fire, so the songs reflected that theme. Our choir  leader always  chooses challenging pieces and this year was no exception. She chose the 20-minute long medley from Hunchback of Notre Dame as our piece for the second half - lots of Latin, jaunty songs and sad ones all in a mix - all learned off by heart - very challenging at my age! I have tried to include a video of it but am being told the video is too long to insert. So you will have to make do with a photo instead. We had to wear clothes that reflected the colour of earth, water, air and fire - so blues, greens, oranges and beiges - as usually we are in a uniform colour, most often black.

We received the news a few days after, that our choir mistress is stepping down for a year as as she has too many commitments at the moment and needs some time to refresh. She has acquired a temporary replacement for the next year, so that begs the question whether our repertoires will change in some way to be less challenging. Time will tell. 

Blogland

I've been blogging since 2008. I first came across blogs when Wife in the North began blogging. As a journalist with the Sunday Times, she moved to the North East and wrote in an amusing way about the change in pace up there compared to London. One of her quotes which stuck with me was, when asked by her children on a car journey "where are we?", she replied "1959".

I then began blogging myself when my alcoholic husband Greg was making our family life intolerable. At the time, I believed trying to suppress everything and bottle it up, not telling friends and family, was the best option, but then needed somewhere to go to blow off steam. The blog provided me with that escape and tons of steam. It was a help for my sanity as well as a record where we were heading. I soon discovered I had a lot of followers - some in pretty much similar circumstances to me who all said they were relieved to read my experiences were like theirs. I also had a lot of alcoholic followers who, by the time Greg was fading fast and dying, said it had helped them back from the brink to sobriety. They realised they could not put themselves or their family through what was becoming my reality.

Of course, since Greg has died, my blog has morphed into something else - the ramblings or rantings of a retired, widowed Londoner. For me it has been a diary of important events to look back on - some things I had forgotten entirely when rereading some of the older posts. My followers seem to have dwindled from 70 at one stage to one or two now. Maybe the drama is what they came for and now the boring posts don't cut the mustard. For me, it will always just be a diary. I try to write once a week to keep it going, although to be honest, sometimes it is difficult to come up with something new. I oscillate between stopping altogether, but being afraid to drop a comfort blanket.

Some bloggers post everyday. Some of the earlier blogs I visited no longer exist, including Wife in the North. I wonder why you blog or why you read other's blogs?

Land Girl

I was away on holiday at the 80th celebrations of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, so I am a bit late to the party with this post. Just before VE Day, the manageress of the foodbank charity shop where I volunteer, wanted to dress the shop window with Union Jack flags, books about the Second World War and CDs of war time songs - as she put it, to celebrate peace, not glorify war. She asked us volunteers to provide photos of family who had served in the Second World War. My mother was a Land Girl so I provided the photo below of my mother (in the very centre) talking to the Duchess of Gloucester who had arrived with her entourage to watch the Land Girls at work, harvesting potatoes and doing their bit for King and Country. 

My mum would have been so chuffed to know her photo was on display in the local High Street.

SURVIVAL CLASS

Following on from my last post about being pre-diabetic......

When the problem was first diagnosed from raised sugar levels in my blood a few years ago, my GP suggested I be referred to our local gym for 12 free NHS-funded gym sessions. I was introduced to the lovely Gloria who took me on a tour of the gym and showed me what all the equipment was and got me exercising on them. She took weight, height, BMI and many other measurements and said she would update those as the weeks went by. I have never been a particularly sporty person - in fact I hated it with a passion at school and I even tried to be hockey goalkeeper, so I wouldn't have to run around the pitch!! I have never kept up sport in my adult life, so approached this new venture with somewhat nervous trepidation.

Surprisingly, as the weeks went by, I found I actually enjoyed exercising on the equipment and at the half-way stage all measurements were taken again and it was found I was losing a little weight (not that I had much to lose) but other statistics were reducing or improving, such as body fat percentage, muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance. A lot had improved by the end of the 12-week stage and a blood test revealed that I was no longer pre-diabetic.

The gym of course then asked if I would like to become a permanent member on senior citizen rates. The rates were so reasonable and far less per month than I was already paying to do a single pilates class at my local church. The gym rate would allow me to do hundreds of classes per week AND use their swimming pool AND use the gym whenever I liked - all for less than  I was paying for those 4 pilates classes per month. It was, as they now say, a no-brainer. 

I try to do three classes a week. One is a class purely for those of us who were referred from the NHS. A lot of the participants have high blood pressure, or have had heart attacks or strokes or maybe like me were pre-diabetic. The class is reasonably gentle with exercises that increase heart rate or with the use of weights increase muscle strength. I find I'm the most energetic one there and that gives me a lot of kudos.

On another day, I do two other classes back-to-back for anyone over the age of 60. The first of these two is what I call my manic class. Another lady calls it her survival class. The teacher is a lovely woman who herself is over 60 and plays fast beaty music in the background but I think she thinks we are all 16 and not 60. By the time you have done one of her 45-minute classes, you come out nearly on your hands and knees with the sweat pouring off you. I always feel I have achieved something by the end, but often half-way through I am clock-watching waiting for it to be over! Occasionally I will find the time to do some zumba classes or go into the actual gym itself, but parking fees often dictates how long I'll spend there and how often. 

Who knew, I would discover exercise in my seventies? Maybe I'll be one of those people who run the marathon in their nineties.

KEEPING FIT

A few years ago, after a routine blood test, I was told I was pre-diabetic. Not close enough to the cut-off point to be on medication, but close enough to need to do something about it.  I have always tried to eat sensibly and exercise a little at home, but confess I am a chocoholic and, because people know that, I often get chocolate as presents for my birthday in November or at Christmas. The blood test for diabetes is referred to as HbA1c and the cut-off point is 48 mmol/mol.  You don't need to know what that means, but only that my readings have been consistently about 42 over recent years and the latest one in January showed it was 47. Sugar levels can stay in your blood for three months, so to have an annual  blood test in January covers November and December - the very months when it is my birthday as well as Christmas and I gorge myself on the chocolate presents given to me. 

My GP was about to give me a stern talking-to when she gave me the recent results, but I have managed to convince her that January may be the wrong time of year to take the blood tests, as I am very good with my diet for the rest of the year. I have persuaded her to repeat the test in August or September and hope the readings will be more favourable. I'm trying hard not to eat chocolate and sweet things or too much carbohydrates. September will tell if I have succeeded. 

I also read recently that as we age, the level of sugar in our blood rises anyway and that the cut-of for diabetes should be about 56mmol/mol and not 48mmol/mol. If that is the case, my reading of 47 is way off the danger zone. If any professional out there can comment on that, I'd be interested to know.

Shingles

Two days after my return from Devon, I had booked an appointment with my GP surgery to have a shingles vaccine. The medics have been pestering me for years to have it done and I kept refusing, partly because I was getting enough jabs as it was with Covid and flu to keep my arm looking like a pin cushion. But another reason to avoid it was that a relative of mine had had the shingles jab a few years ago and gone down with shingles some three weeks later. The doctors had told her it was a huge coincidence, but a coincidence I did not particularly want. However, the nagging doubt that shingles itself would be far worse without the immunity, I decided to go ahead with it last week.

Shock number one was the condition it left me in! For five days afterwards, my arm was so painful, red and swollen I could not bear to lie on it in bed. Additionally I felt so tired, as if someone had pulled my plug. The day immediately after the injection, I woke as usual in the morning, had breakfast and was so exhausted I went back to bed and slept for an hour. Then I had lunch and went back to bed for a further two-hour nap. After supper, I returned to bed for an early night. I googled side effects of the vaccination and those symptoms I was having (swollen, red arm pain and extreme fatigue) were within the bounds of normal, so I just had to put up with it. Five days later I was beginning to return to some semblance of normal. However, in one of my  gym classes this week, which are manic at the best of times, it was all I could do to keep up and was sweating buckets, so much so my hair was as wet as if I'd just had come out of the shower.

Shock number two was that it is no longer a single vaccination but now in two parts, six months apart. I have the same to come (if not worse, as someone has knowledgeably told me) in November. Boy, am I looking forward to that!!

Torquay in Devon

When I was a young teenager, my parents and I used to holiday down in Torquay in Devon. I have not been back for 60 years, so when my best friend offered to go on holiday with me and asked where I fancied (given that she hates flying and not keen on train travel, so that cancels out somewhere abroad), I suggested Torquay. We were away for 5 days (4 nights) and stayed at the Hampton by Hilton hotel which was literally 30 seconds from the harbour. I went down by train changing at Exeter and arrived at the hotel on Tuesday afternoon. Amazingly, my friend, who had travelled separately by car from Hertfordshire, arrived by my side just as I was checking in.

Once we had unpacked in our separate rooms, we met up to wander around the immediate vicinity of the hotel - the harbour and promenade - and to get our bearings. I have to say Torquay had not changed much from my memory of it. Maybe a few different shops and a bit of modernisation, but it was still very much like it was in the 1960s. We were incredibly lucky with the weather - deep blue cloudless skies and a gentle sea breeze.

Torquay Harbour

Torquay Harbour

Torquay from the pier

The following day, we went to Buckfast Abbey - a monastery famous for its mead and tonic wine production. There are still 13 monks living there and I think I spotted two of them. The Abbey was only finished in 1932 on the site of the old abbey which was plundered and dissolved during Henry VIII's time when he broke with Rome. More of its history can be read here.  It has a mixture of styles - Byzantine, Norman and Gothic but with a modern twist. The grounds are enormous and you can wander through herbal gardens and sensory gardens, as well as lawns of immaculate grass.

Buckfast Abbey

A secluded garden at Buckfast

Buckfast grounds

The following day (which happened to be VE Day) we decided to visit the National Trust house that belonged to Agatha Christie. The house was amazing and crammed with artefacts and belongings - she was clearly a hoarder. It was her favourite place to stay. Again the grounds were spectacular with forest bits where the paths zig-zagged down to the River Dart and where her boat house was kept. An added bonus for me was that, because it was VE day, they had two people dressed as an RAF officer and Land Girl wandering around the grounds and at the end, I had my photo taken with them, as I had mentioned to the Land Girl that my mum was one. She was very interested to hear my story.

Agatha Christie's house at Greenway

View of the River Dart from her garden

Her garden

RAF officer and Land Girl in the grounds

The final full day was spent visiting Dartmouth via a steam train ride from Paignton to Kingswear and a short ferry ride across from Kingswear to Dartmouth. The houses are built in terraces up the hills bordering the river and are painted in yellows and pinks and pale blues, as well as white which make them look very attractive. Towering over it all is The Royal Naval College. We only had a few hours to wander around Dartmouth and grab a late lunch before catching the ferry back to Kingswear and the last (16.05) steam train back to Paignton.

Steam train to Dartmouth

Kingswear on East side of River Dart

The Boatfloat Dartmouth

mouth of the River Dart

Royal Naval College, Dartmouth

We checked out on Saturday to return home - my friend by car to Hertfordshire and me by train back to London Paddington. Of course, being Saturday, the timetables were not as easy as the outward trip and once in London, there were lots of cancellations on both the underground and overground because of engineering works, so my trip from Paddington to South London took almost as long as the trip from Devon to Paddington. Furthermore I had  changed trains or buses so many times and also lugged a heavy case with me up and down a lot of station staircases with not an escalator in sight! I arrived home shattered and very much in need of a holiday!!

Back from Devon

Sorry, my usual Sunday post is short this week. I've just returned from a much needed break in Devon. More of that in my weekly post next Sunday.

Communing with nature

I help out as a volunteer at our local park's Information Centre and have done so for about 20 years. The centre is only open for a couple of hours on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon. We sell notelets with pictures of the park, notepads and pens, tote bags, leaflets on trees or ducks and all kinds of food for feeding birds, squirrels or ducks. We also try to answer any questions from the public about a particular tree or duck or problem that has arisen. The park has an enormous lake and is home to about 30 or more herons, so we are an interesting case for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who every April come to visit with their cameras, telescopes and binoculars to view the herons nesting with their babies.

When we first moved to this area (see here), we visited the park frequently as a married couple just chilling from our busy jobs. I always find walking by water (be it the sea, a river or a lake) calming and I can empty out any worries I have. When Kay was born, we would take her to this park and she would enjoy seeing the ducks and geese  or playing on the swings and seesaws. Then as a dog-owner, I would visit every morning to give the dog a long walk off-lead and through that got to know many other dogwalkers, one of whom has become a close friend. When Greg was at the height of his alcoholic addiction, I found it a calming place to come to escape the nightmare. I still keep involved through the Information Centre and do a shift about once a month there.

When the Covid pandemic struck, the centre was closed for many many months and only gradually re-opened when it was safe to do so. But many volunteers were either shy to return in case they were exposed to Covid or just got complacent and stayed away, so the centre was still often closed for lack of staff. The result was that a lot of the public did not know the centre had reopened and were often surprised when they found it was. I have recently been involved in recruiting more volunteers by advertising on our local Facebook group and a good twenty people have come forward. I have been involved in the last few weeks in training them up to do the shifts.

Last week we officially opened our community garden - a patch of land alongside the centre which we are turning into a place where people can come and plant flowers or vegetables or just watch others doing so.  Amongst our newly-recruited volunteers have been a few men who have been very helpful in doing a lot of heavy lifting, sawing and clearing to make it possible. On Friday I was given permission to drive my car into the park at 5mph to transport loads of plants the Chairwoman had bought from a local chain nursery. She is unable to drive so needed help getting them there. There were all sorts of plants ranging from tomatoes, lettuce, bedding plants, perennials and small fruit trees. This weekend they will all be planted by the public who want to get involved.

With good weather and the summer finally approaching, I hope it will be a success in getting more people in the community involved in communing with nature. 

I wasn't born yesterday

I had one of those scam calls on Easter Monday. When I went to pick up the landline phone, it told me the number was "withheld". Not sure who it was, I picked up the call. An extremely well-spoken man asked me if I was Addy and gave me my address, to which I replied that he was correct. He told me he was from HSBC bank and that they were reopening their branch in my village. It had closed about 2 years ago and has since been turned into a gym. When I asked where they were reopening the branch, he told me it was the old NatWest building (NatWest had also closed 6 months ago).

He asked why I had not replied to their letter about issuing new bank cards. I said I had not received such a letter. He said that funnily enough a lot of people had said that, so he was following it up with a call. I needed to get my debit card changed quickly and I could either get it done at branch A (which is my nearest one, a bus ride away) or he could deliver it personally to me that very day. When I said I could get to Branch A myself, he corrected himself and said Branch A was being refurbished and I would need to get to Branch B which is an even further bus ride away. No problem, I said, I can get to Branch B too. He kept stressing he could save me the bother and deliver it personally that day. I asked what the urgency was and he said the card would expire in 2 days' time. I repeated in that case I would get to Branch B before it expired. He then asked for my date of birth. I told him I do not divulge such information over the phone. At this point I heard a click and he had hung up.

I suppose I should have realised it was a scam, because what bank would ring you on an Easter Monday and personally offer to deliver a new debit card, but to be fair, the call came out of the blue in the late afternoon, when I was a bit weary, and the man was so well-spoken -not like a lot of scam callers where English is not their first language and it is difficult to decipher what they are saying. I was therefore initially thrown into thinking the call was genuine, until it didn't seem to make sense.

I am glad I did not offer any sensitive information, although the man clearly had my name, address and phone number. I reported it when I went into Branch A the next day, although they seemed pretty disinterested in my story. I also reported it to their Fraud Team at Headquarters, who just advised me to keep an eye on my online account. I also reported it on our local Facebook area group and to my surprise two people knew someone it had happened to the week before and one lady said she had had the very same call with the very same details of conversation on the same afternoon as me.

I don't know how these scammers sleep at night. Their parents must be really proud of them.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to one and all. I leave you with a picture of my Easter tree - a tradition I brought back from my time living in Germany. Each year I add more ornaments. The pink and blue one hanging at the bottom I sewed from a kit myself.

Dr Addy will see you now

I have always had a passion for watching medical programmes, be it the real thing in documentaries or dramas. From a small child I was engrossed in watching Dr Kildare, although I rather suspect that it was because Richard Chamberlain was very dishy and the main attraction! Then came Emergency Ward 10, Gray's Anatomy,  Casualty and Holby City. The documentaries such as 24 hours in A&E, Casualty 24/7, GPs Behind Closed Doors and Surgeons at the Edge of Life. I have watched so many I swear I could open my own practice! When watching them, I can usually make the correct diagnosis before the doctor does! 

My closest friends have a dislike of all things medical and any mention of blood or gory operations has them running for the hills and sticking their fingers in their ears, so as not to hear any detail. Me - I can watch a documentary inside the operating theatre showing a complex operation, while I eat a plate of spaghetti bolognaise. It really doesn't bother me one bit, but it does mean I cannot share my interest with my friends. 

I sometimes think I should have chosen this profession as my career, but in reality, at school, I hated chemistry with a passion and veered more to foreign languages than the sciences, so that ruled me out from the start. It was therefore only ever going to be a pastime.

I often wonder whether I had a subliminal influence on Kay choosing medicine as her career, as she was kinda forced to watch these programmes with me, as she grew up. She says, it didn't, but, like water on a stone, it may have had some effect. She is now progressing in leaps and bounds in her career and I am immensely proud of her. 

April Showers

My tooth extraction continues to give me problems and is taking an age to heal. It is 2 weeks now and I still can't eat or chew normal meals or drink hot liquids.  Given that I was half-murdered in the process, I suppose it is not surprising. The good news is I am losing weight, but I yearn for something crunchy rather than the sloppy meals I have been having for the last 2 weeks. I have held back from doing my usual volunteering and going to the gym, but yesterday I decided I would do a shift at the foodbank charity shop on the till. I thought that would be a gentle reintroduction into some semblance of normality. I took a bottle of water with me, as it was a very warm day. On my arrival, the manageress was very kind and offered me a hot drink which I obviously declined. I'd not been there 20 minutes, when I decided to take a sip of water. But because I have not drank directly out of a bottle since the tooth was extracted, I found it difficult to get my mouth round the bottle top and managed in front of a shop full of customers to spill a good deal of it all down my chin and clothes. Thankfully it dried off fairly quickly, so I didn't look a complete idiot for the entire shift. Note to self.....drink out of a glass next time.

Fangs for nothing

I've been a bit below par this week. It started the week before, when biting down on food made one tooth feel very funny indeed. It felt like had a small grain of something stuck to my tooth and when I bit down on it, a pain shot into my gum. I thought it must just be that it was extra sensitive for some reason, so soldiered on a couple of days until last Saturday I was brushing my teeth and a filling dropped out.

Sod's law it was the weekend and my dentist was not open. I had heard from a friend that you can buy temporary filling kits, so I nipped out to the local chemist and bought one. As Kay and her dentist husband live nearby, I popped in to ask if he might help me with the temporary filling until I could see my dentist. On investigation, he broke the bad news. The filling had fallen out because part of the tooth was cracked and would not hold a filling. As he was not in his surgery, he could not say without an xray whether the crack went below the gum or not, but, if it did, he feared the whole tooth would have to be extracted and would be unlikely to be saved. I must admit, I could feel the cracked side of the tooth wobbling terribly and every time I tried to talk or swallow, my tongue caught it and the wobbly bit sent a pain shooting into my head.

I soldiered on all that weekend, unable to eat or even drink properly and rang my dentist first thing Monday morning. Thankfully they were able to fit me in as an emergency, although I did not see my usual dentist but one of her junior staff. After an xray, the young dentist confirmed that the tooth was beyond saving as the crack did go well below the gum. I agreed to have the tooth extracted there and then. It took him well over 20 minutes to rock the little blighter back and forth, as it refused to budge. I even joked he might need to use gunpowder. I began to panic that he would never manage to extract it, as it did seem rather out of his depth to manage, when eventually he confirmed it was out.  I came out £270 poorer with a face looking like Quasimodo.

I've not been allowed to eat hot or chewy food or drink hot drinks for the last 6 days. The good news is, I've lost 3 pounds and reverted to my pre-Christmas weight. I've had a banging headache too which I think was due to all the pulling and tugging on my skull. I've even got a bruise on the outside of my cheek where the dentist tried to get more traction. I look as if I've done ten rounds with Mike Tyson. I've cancelled all gym classes and other engagements this week and felt sorry for myself. I'm hoping normality will resume this coming week.

But in the words of the poetess Pam Ayres ......

My Village

The little enclave in London where I have lived for 46 years has always been a pleasant area to live in and houses a population of about 45,000. It has always had a peaceful village-y feel to it - a small sleepy High Street, old churches, a village green, one cinema and lots of pubs, yet it boasts nine railway stations and a tram stop connecting us within 15 minutes to all the major hubs in Central London. We are a ten-minute drive from the Kent countryside too, so have the choice of either visiting busy inner London or picturesque Kent villages, depending on our mood. We also have two enormous parks in our midst - one quite wild with an 18th century mansion and woodland; the other more cultivated with a lake. Greg and I chose this area for all those qualities. Greg came from rural Lincolnshire, so was not happy living in the hubbub of inner London. I had been raised in Lewisham - a multicultural inner London borough which because of its proximity to the docks had been badly bombed during the war and very much a place of deprivation in the 1950s and 60s, so I welcomed the village-y feel as an upgrade.

Since the arrival of the internet, where many people shop online, the high street shops began to close gradually and in their place coffee shops and restaurants sprang up. In the space of 800 yards, I can probably count at least five Turkish restaurants, three Italian, a Greek, a Lebanese, two Thai, a few Indian and two kebab shops, a West African restaurant, various pub chains, a dessert shop, an ice cream parlour and at least 15 cafes. Sadly the number of shops where you can go in to buy a gift for someone or browse has fallen dramatically. The only shops where you cannot get a service online are hairdressers and nail salons, so many of these have sprung up too. We have four of the major supermarkets still here, but all the banks have closed to move to a neighbouring suburb, so we can only get banking services at the local Post office in which the queue spills out into the street because of the demand. It has meant that the High Street is quite quiet during the day, but comes alive at night when the restaurants and pub chains are heaving.

As I say, until recently, it has been a sleepy village sort of place, but in the last few years it has changed. We have gangs going around stealing cars (I am advisedly informed to take to Eastern Europe) and stealing tools out of workmen's vans to resell at car boot fairs. There's been quite a few mobile phone snatchers riding bikes. In addition, because we are sandwiched between two relatively deprived areas, we have trouble with warring gangs and there have been quite a few stabbings, They are almost becoming a weekly event and so much so that nobody bats an eyelid. This week a completely innocent person was walking past a supermarket minding their own business and was set upon randomly by someone who proceeded to bash them on the head. The poor victim died in hospital a few days ago.

It is quite concerning how life has changed recently. I do not want to be one of those people who constantly say "in my day, we used to ....", but it seems life has changed quite a bit over the last twenty years alone and not necessarily for the better.

Flight or fright

There has been a Channel 4 series on TV (see here) where a clinic in Amsterdam can cure people of their phobias. Apparently getting people to confront them until their fear is right off the height of its scale and then giving them a single beta blocker renders them perfectly OK to face their phobia the next day with no problems at all. 

It is amazing what people have phobias about.  Quite common on this programme were spiders, snakes, frogs, birds and mice. Less common and in some ways difficult to comprehend were balloons and clowns. One really intriguing one was a fear of dachshunds. The man hated the little short legs and long body. He didn't have a problem with other dogs, but dachshunds caused him to go into extreme panic.

The trigger for phobias usually starts way back in childhood when a parent passes on a phobia (say, a child seeing its mother freak out in the proximity of a spider, which then ingrains into that child the fear that spiders are horrible and to be avoided). It can also originate from a personal experience someone has that then induces the fear of that reoccurring. 

I can't say I personally like spiders or snakes, but not enough to be terrified of them and if I find a spider in the house, I tend to dispose of it myself. My mother was terrified of stag beetles and to this day I cannot bear to be outside in May when they fly about at dusk. It's the size of them and the fact they tend to bump into things that worries me. We tend to get a lot in South London and Kent and I am always glad when June comes and they are gone forever.

Male stag beetle

My biggest phobia, however, used to be eating out in public. I was fine until I was about 19. Then one evening when I was at university, I went out for a meal in a restaurant with a boyfriend. As the meal was served, I took a few mouthfuls and then came over all hot and faint. I found I couldn't swallow and felt everyone was looking at me. Of course, nobody was, or, if they were, probably just glancing across the room rather than AT me. My heart was pounding and I felt sick. I was forced to stand up and rush out of the restaurant for fresh air and never went back to finish the meal.  After that, I was unable to eat out in public for many many years. I would avoid invites to weddings and work business meetings, where I knew a meal was involved. The very thought of it would make me feel sick. I'd make all manner of excuses. This phobia remained with me for a good two decades after that, including my own wedding, which caused no end of problems and extreme panic leading up to it.

It was really only after Greg died that I had to put my big girl pants on and face the fact that sometimes I had no choice. And to my delight, I managed to overcome it in time. Now, I don't think twice about accepting invitations to dine out and have no problems at all.  In fact, at Kay's wedding, not only did I sit at the top table and face 80 people while I ate, I also took on the Father of the Bride speech in front of them all with no qualms at all. 

When I think back, the trigger probably originates from when I was at secondary school. We used to have school dinners, six pupils to a table. We used to help ourselves to the main course from tureens on each table. Only once we had finished eating that, would the kitchen staff take those tureens away and then bring the dessert tureens to each table. One day, I had helped myself to  one too many boiled potatoes for my main course and had left one on my plate. Our history teacher was on lunch duty, came and stood over me making me eat it while everyone watched, eager to get on with being served the dessert. The potato was cold and dry and difficult to swallow, but that teacher still stood over me until I had eaten every last bit. Only then would she give permission for the main course tureen to be taken away and the dessert tureen to be served. I swear that was most likely what caused me such anguish for those twenty odd years I suffered that phobia. Being a teacher is a very respected profession, but do they realise what damage they can do? I bet she never ever realised what harm she was doing me but what gave her the right to force-feed me? She probably won't remember me, but I have never ever forgotten her.

Solid as a rock

Earlier this week, I decided to educate myself and join the posh classes..... I went to the opera. In my lifetime I have only been to a few operas, mainly when I was in my twenties and living in Germany, but have not been to any since. One I have never seen is Madame Butterfly, so, as it was on for one night only in my local theatre, I decided to go along.

A friend, who is a massive opera fan and was a regular visitor to the English National Opera at the London Colosseum, before she became housebound at the age of 90, advised me to a take a box of tissues with me as the story is quite sad. I got there way too early as I had left the car behind and travelled by bus, but settled into my seat and watched the hordes of people coming in clutching glasses of wine and in some cases food!! When did that become a thing in the theatre? The opera, written by Puccini was sang in Italian but thankfully there were surtitles above the stage with the English translation projected,  so it helped to know what they were singing about. I had studied the synopsis of the plot, so had a vague idea of what was going to happen. I was well prepared when at the very end, Madame Butterfly stabs herself to death which was quite dramatic.

At the very end the cast came on stage one by one to take a bow and the audience clapped and cheered as each of the main characters brought up the rear. But that was not the end of it. The opera had been played by the Ukrainian National Opera Company (both singers and orchestra) and they began to hold up an enormous Ukrainian flag whilst singing in Ukrainian. The surtitles projected the English translation about them loving their country and fighting for freedom. I kid you not, every one of the audience, well over 800 of us - myself included - took to our feet and clapped wildly and cheered. It was so emotional as we obviously all wanted to show our solidarity to them in the light of what had happened in the last week or so. They in turn seemed stunned by our reaction as maybe they don't usually sing that patriotic song at the end of their performances or, if they do, maybe the audiences don't normally react so demonstratively with a standing ovation. Either way, it was THAT that brought me to tears rather than Madame Butterfly. I think everyone felt the same, namely that we wanted to show the Ukrainian people we stood shoulder to shoulder with them.

The irony of it was that Madame Butterfly had fallen in love with an American naval officer who toyed with her emotions and then discarded her. Even when he knew she had a son by him, he proposed to take the son back to America with him and be raised by the American woman he was now married to. It was the ultimate cause of her suicide of honour. It just goes to show you can't trust some Americans, I thought, as I made my way out of the theatre. There's one I can distinctly think of right now.

Fifteenth anniversary

This week on 6 March sees the 15th anniversary of Greg's death. For me, fifteen years as a widow. 

Last week some choir friends and I went to see the latest Bridget Jones film. I won't give too much away, but in the first few minutes you learn that Bridget is now a widow and that her Mr Darcy was killed whilst out in Sudan on a humanitarian mission. She is having to cope with raising two small children. Her friends are urging her to get back out there and find someone else. It was hilarious in places and my friends came out buzzing with excitement. I didn't want to spoil the mood, so said I had thought it lovely too. In reality I found it hard to watch as it touched so many raw nerves.

It is true it gets easier as time goes by, but the grief never entirely fades away. It is just different. I still yearn for what could have been, what we could have done in our retirement together - places to see and things to do. It is just not the same on your own. I try to keep busy (sometimes too busy) with things that distract me - volunteering for foodbank, the park, gym, choir - but it never gets easier, when you come home to an empty house, climb the stairs and turn out the lights on your own. Night after night after night. Not easy when everywhere you look you see so many elderly couples still full of the joys and holding hands.

It's not been good for him either. He's missed out so much on the world news he loved and worked for - goodness, what he would have to say on the current world situation; he's missed out on the success of his daughter at university and becoming a medical doctor; and he's missed out on her falling in love and marrying a wonderful man.

His death was of his own making which also makes it harder to accept sometimes. If only he had stopped drinking. But addiction is hard to overcome and I guess in the end, he was too troubled and too far deep to stop. For those caught up in addiction, look here for how things could turn out if you don't stop. It doesn't make easy reading, but it may turn you against what will happen, if your addiction takes hold. If it helps one person, this blog will have proved its usefulness.